Missing Persons: Becky Levi as the First Lady of MMA

Latasha Marzolla is a former Playboy model. Gina Carano
is starring in a Steven Soderbergh film. Three seconds on Google
can point you to a link titled “Top 10 Sexiest Female MMA
Fighters.”

There is an undeniable reason for MMA’s recent approval of female
athletes: many of them are an easy fit for magazine covers and
adolescent swooning. Acceptance of their gender in combat sports
seems to come with the provision that they look good in a dress.
(Men are objectified, too, but it’s rare that fans will outright
reject one because his face is asymmetrical.) That preoccupation
with model looks has more or less nominated Carano as both the
“face” and the pioneer of women’s MMA.

Revisionist and wrong. Carano might be the most popular, and
crater-sized dimples may make promotion easier, but it was Becky Levi who
made the first strides for the division.

Levi, now in her 40s, was likely the first female to compete in an
MMA bout on US soil during a March 1997 IFC event at the Akwesasane
Indian reservation in New York.

“I was told that was the first [female] fight in the country,” Levi
told me recently. “The crowd was supportive. I sold out all my
shirts, all that kind of stuff. They loved having a female fight on
the card. I think they were probably disappointed because my
opponent was not very athletic.”

Levi fought Betty Fagan,
finishing her with strikes in less than two minutes; she competed
six more times before retiring in 2000 with a 7-1 record. Multiple
surgeries followed. “I was just broken,” she said.

Levi now works as a strength and conditioning instructor at Spiece
Fitness in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Submission grapplers and boxers
occasionally require her help, but that’s as far as her interest
goes: she’s largely unaware of Carano or others. “I’m not really
into the sport. I’m not happy with the [promotional] direction
taken.”